it was a demo called "morning song." it was such a beautiful thing. i'd have to say that one is probably up there. >> mike mccready great to have you. thank you for joining us. that's "the ed show" the "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening. have a great weekend. thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour. you want to see something that's satisfying? something that you can relax into and wash over you? here you go. >> you endorsed governor romney. >> i did. >> are you in contact with him all the time? >> yes. >> what do you talk about? >> in general. he has a stance on china, which is a country that is ripping our heart out. we do nothing to protect ourselves, that i really like. >> where were these made? >> i don't know where they were made. but they are great.

it's ties, shirts, cuff links. sold at macy's and they are doing great. >> where are the ties made? >> the ties are made in where? china. the ties are made in china. >> that look on donald trump's face is worth a million gold plated towers. that's worth the price of whatever impulse you have towards your fellow human being donald trump. whatever price you pay in empathetic shame just for the pleasure of seeing his actual shame at having that issue resolved that way on national tv. to be satisfied with seeing this lie of his unravelled. because it is a kind of lie to make it seem like you're the guy

who would be super tough on china in business terms and economic terms. you're the guy who would stop china from ripping america's heart out while you're the guy who is making his self-branded neck ware in china. you might refer to that as sort of moral pretzeling as hypocrisy. if you want to speak more bluntly, it's a kind of lie to portray yourself as standing up for some particular thing when you don't stand for that thing at all. the same thing happened last month when mitt romney held a business roundtable in bedford height, ohio. he did it at a plant called american spring wire. they bill themselves as north america's largest manufacturer of valve and commercial-quality sprint wire. they also make pc strand. at his visit to american spring wire, mr. romney hammered away at president obama for not being tough on china. not the way that he mitt romney

would be tough on china. but the company mr. romney chose for his backdrop that day, the company that he chose to implicitly help make that case so happened to be a poster child for success by president obama in getting tough on china. in 2009 in the first months of president obama's presidency, american spring wire joined with two other makers to ask for help. china was unfairly dumping steel wire in the united states market at artificial low prices. they asked for help. the commerce department said they would investigate and the commerce department did move to protect american spring wire. they cracked down on china for dumping their underpriced product. thus the company was benefitted. they got the help they wanted. a company that was then used as a backdrop for mitt romney saying president obama had not been tough on china.

today mr. romney gave a major address on economic policy. this is part of his closing argument for the presidency. he delivered the speech at a company called kinsler construction services. mr. romney argued that president obama's stimulus had failed to help private companies. >> a new stimulus three years after the recession officially ended, that may spare government, but it won't stimulate the private sector than it did four years ago. >> that's what mitt romney said today at kinsler construction services in ames, iowa. you know that blissful moment waiting for the other shoe to drop? you can see david letterman scrutinizing the ties. you know you're in that moment now. as noted at think progress today, kinsler construction services benefitted from $700,000 from the stimulus that mr. romney says did no good for any companies in the private sector. you can try to make the argument

that the stimulus program did not help private businesses even though the evidence shows the opposite is true. when you're trying to make that false argument that the program didn't help private businesses as you are standing at a private business that the stimulus helped, that's a particular kind of implicit lie. and the rest of us can see that lie as it's unravelled in realtime by reporting. even if you the teller of that particular lie do not seem chasened by the experience of being called out. here's another one. mr. romney spoke yesterday in the town of defiance, ohio. part of why ohio's economy has bounced back is we did not let detroit go bankrupt. the obama administration bailed out the automobile industry. it's roared back to life and the big three are hiring again. yesterday mitt romney gave that obama administration success story a little mitt romney tickle.

>> i saw a store today that one of the great manufacturers in this state is thinking of moving all production to china. >> wow. mr. romney saying, hey, don't get too comfy there, ohio, with the obama rescue of the automobile industry. it's been better. we saved everything here and that's why you have jobs, but don't get too comfy. i read they are moving all the jobs working for jeep. they are moving all the jeep jobs to china. he said that in ohio on the campaign trail 12 days before the election. and it is not true at all. the real jeep news that day was actually that chrysler announced they were adding 1100 new jobs in the u.s. here making jeeps in detroit. and chrysler says it could hire almost as many people at another plant in warren, michigan. chrysler is investing half a billion in its toledo plant. but mitt romney got up that said defiance, ohio and says they are

moving all their jobs. it's embarrassing for mr. romney. why would mitt romney get up in front of 12,000 people in ohio and tell them the auto bailout hasn't helped you at all. your jobs are going to china. i read it somewhere. where's the story? we found it. he was apparently trolling the nether regions of the right-wing press. he found it on a washington examiner blog post, which reported, quote, jeep, an obama favorite, looks to shift production to china. a move that would crash the economy in toledo. this is a misreading of a bloomberg report that was reporting good news.

global demand for jeep has risen to the point where they can sell more in china and wants to build jeeps for china in china. this is good news for an american company, not bad news. they are not shipping american jobs overseas. this doesn't mean less work for americans. this means they are adding, they are expanding overseas. thanks to the auto bailout, chrysler stuck around to win again. yay! or as mitt romney put it -- >> jeep is thinking of moving all production to china. >> i cover campaigns for a living. i understand that politicians inflate and conflate and duck and dodge and weave and dissemble sometimes. that's not what he's doing. he's flat out lying to the voters of ohio. on the basis of something he happened to read in the right wing blog sphere. his lie is embarrassing and should be unsettling for the rest of the world. imagine him waking up checking his conservative twitter feed and running with whatever he

finds there. hey, i read somewhere that russia did a thing. mr. romney is not wising up. he made the same mistake when he tried to say that president obama had not said the word terror when he talked about the benghazi attack in the rose garden the day after the attack. he did use the word. if you read the conservative blogs, that never happened. and that apparently was enough of a fact check for mitt romney. that's what he tried to use and turned out to be a humiliating gotcha attempt that failed before the largest possible audience. between 50-something million people watching him fail in a presidential debate. >> i'm the president. and i'm always responsible. and that's why nobody is more interested in finding out exactly what happened than i do. the day after the attack, governor, i stood in the rose

garden and i told the american people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. that this was an act of terror. >> it's interesting the president just said something that in the day after the attack, he went to the rose garden and said this was an act of terror. >> that's what i said. >> you said in the rose garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? it was not a spontaneous demonstration. >> please proceed, governor. >> i want to make sure we get that for the record. it took the president 14 days before he called the attack an act of terror. >> get the transcript. >> he did, in fact, sir. let me call it an act of terror. >> can you say that again, candy? >> they never took back the rose garden thing. they never corrected that. after mitt romney said in front of 50 million people, you never said terror. they never took it back. they haven't taken back saying jeep is shipping all the jobs to china.

he's not taken it back. they never took it back about the american spring wire factory where he was making the case that president obama hasn't been tough on china. and they did and that's why the company is still there. they never took it back on the stimulus company -- the company that benefitted from the stimulus while romney was talking about no company benefitted from the stimulus. they never take these things back. it's okay for your uncle who watches fox news all day and yells at the tv to say i saw that story somewhere. right? but when you want to be president of the united states, you can't keep proving that your first line of intelligence is the right-wing blog sphere and something that you read that isn't true ends up going directly into a presidential candidate's speech. stuff is not true just because you read it somewhere.

yet twice now in the closing weeks of the campaign we have seen mitt romney operate that way. democrats think they see an end game, connecting the romney campaign problems that the romney campaign never corrects itself. the democrats now, you can tell, believe that they can sell the voting public on barack obama as the candidate you can trust to tell you the truth and believe what he says against mitt romney as the candidate you cannot trust. integrity has become the democrat's issue now. teg integrity an trust. the obama campaign was divided on strategy. they were divided over whether to hold mitt romney to the severely conservative positions he had to take to try to win. he e declared himself to be in order to get the nomination. they were divided between that strategy and whether they were going to try to make mitt romney seem like a flip-flopper. someone who would say anything he needed to to get by. they chose to try to hold him to

the conservative positions. now as it comes down to the final vote, mitt romney is abandoning all those positions. he's abandoned his own policies in a way that makes all of those policies less relevant. those positions themselves have become less relevant. what has become relevant is his willingness to abandon them. his willingness to walk away from anything to never mind the record, don't bother correcting it, don't bother being consistent, hope nobody checks, say anything. his integrity is the closing argument. >> the presidency is all about who has going to fight for the

american people every day, even when you have to make tough decisions that are unpopular because you have some compass about what this country can be. and during the course of these four years, there are all kinds of mistakes that i have made every single day. but my compass has been true. and i've focused on what's going ob best for the american people. >> my compass has been true. the democrats now in the last 11 days integrity has become the closing argument. integrity and trust. joining us is co-host of "the cycle", steve, thank you for being with me. can you have an election about trustworthiness and integrity? it's no longer an ideological argument. >> i think it's an experiment. i don't think we know the answer. we will on election day, but because what mitt romney is attempting to pull off is something i don't think we have

really seen before in modern politics. this is a move to the middle on the cheap. it's coming late in the campaign. it's rhetorical in nature. for comparison, think back to 2000. the republicans made a calculation after eight years of clinton that they were too far in the right, and needed to be in the middle and needed a compassionate conservatism. but bush spent 1999 developing a real program. later called it big government skeftism. he had a real plan for a greater federal role in education. he had a real plan there on prescription drugs. they developed a vision. so there was real substance there. mitt romney was far to the right in the primary. gave the conservative base everything they wanted. this is one of the most conservative republican platforms we have seen. he did nothing at the convention to move away from that. he waited until october 3rd to start in a debate to articulate moderate-sounding outcomes.

not policy, but outcomes. things that sound pleasing to moderates, but he's not changed his position on anything that i can see. i'm struggling to see a precedent. the idea of you can't trust this guy. you don't want him being president. if it's going to work against a candidate, it would have to work now. >> have you seen that attack work? the idea that this guy is morally flimsy, useless. he will do whatever needs to be said and can't take him at his word. has that ever been stuck on a candidate in a way they can't slough off? >> it can be stuck on a candidate in the sense it raises their personal negative rating. that's far variety of reasons. he was the first candidate through september of a major party nominee who had a negative rating. that was dragging down his support in the national polls. the wild card here, the change that took place in october --

the biggest statistic that jumps out is people started judging romney the winner on the economy. he's opened now a high lead over obama on the economy. if that overrides their concerns about his personality and character. then there's not much obama can do. but they had had luck with romney's personal negatives before that. so there's potential there. >> i wonder -- i was thinking about this with the appearances in ohio. looking at the economic numbers in ohio. it's been funny at the personality level to see john kasich talk about how much better things have gotten under his leadership. we'd really to prefer you say things are going badly. as the campaign shrinks down to a small number of swing states and they have that improving economic numbers problem as it were on the republican side in

florida and ohio, does that change the type of argument they need to make about change? about why mitt romney is the guy who should be trusted to do things differently than barack obama? >> they are hitting it there. basically things are on the upswing in ohio. and to keep it going, you need to change leadership in washington. that's a strange message. it's true if you look at the numbers in ohio and to an extent in wisconsin. if you look nationally at where obama has been bleeding support, not as much in ohio. not nearly as dramatic. you can definitely link that to the economy there, to the bailout there, and i can think it's a small example, the 1988 election. a sea of red on the electoral map. bush won coast to coast. there were three states in the upper midwest that went democratic. iowa, minnesota and wisconsin.

it was because the farm economy had collapsed in the '80s. the economy was so much worse there that they wanted to take it out on the reagan administration so they turned on bush. so i see there's a potential there for kind of a flip of that. if the economy is strong, i could see it would explain why obama is doing better in ohio than nationally. >> steve carr knack key, thank you very joining us. do you feel like between now and the election it's one sprint? do you plan to take any time off? >> i haven't been so far, so why change now? >> steve, it's great to have you here. it's a good bet you have not seen the most moving speech by a politician in the last 24 hours. actually it's probably the most moving speech by an american politician in awhile. we have the video tonight. i don't think it's been anywhere else. we'll play it for you here tonight. it's a pretty good chunk of tape. it's truly emotional stuff. that's coming up on the show tonight. stay with us.

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paul ryan is running for vice president of the united states. why is the man running for president of the united states sending his running mate to places in the united states where the people who are going to decide the election cannot see him? that's ahead. that makes tv even better. if your tv were a prom queen, zeebox would be a stretch limo. with this enchanting union, comes a sunroof she can scream from... i'm goin' to prom! [ male announcer ] ...and a driver named bruce that she can re-name james... faster, james! [ male announcer ] ...just 'cause. download zeebox free, and have the night of your life with your tv. download zeebox free, so i test... a lot. do you test with this? freestyle lite test strips? i don't see... beep! wow! that didn't take much blood. yeah, and the unique zipwik tab targets the blood and pulls it in. so easy. yep. freestyle lite needs just a third the blood of onetouch ultra. really? so testing is one less thing i have to worry about today.

great. call or click today and get strips and a meter free. test easy. as soon as indiana senator dick lugar lost his seat in a republican primary to a tea party guy named richard mourdock, they knew the democrats had been given an opening to take that senate seat from red to blue. that was before richard mourdock explained why he would force a

rape victim to give birth against her will. >> even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that's something that god intended to happen. >> he later clarified that god didn't intend for you to be raped, he intended that once you were being raped, it would result in your pregnancy. that's the god's will thing. since those comments, his democratic opponent has been telling the papers that his internal polling in indiana shows mourdock trailing joe donnelly by seven points. since that was given this morning. we know it doesn't account for any effect on the electorate on what he wants to do for rape victims. this is today from terre haute. >> would you vote for a law to

make them have the baby because the baby is a gift of god? >> my point of view all along, the only exception i have for abortion is the life of the mother. >> what if it were a 13-year-old girl raped and impregnated, would you make the girl have the baby? >> you can start throwing all kinds of hypotheticals out there. i've made my statement. >> and he's one of at least 12 republican senate candidates this year who would make that same statement. which it turns out has political consequences. more on that coming up.

there's something that's hiding in plain sight right now on the campaign trail. these are the seven of the swingiest swing states. mitt romney has been in nevada and in iowa and in ohio and then ohio three more times and then iowa and then, yes, ohio again. that's mitt romney's travel itinerary for the last few days. but his running mate paul ryan is doing something very different than that. this hasn't been getting much attention, but he was in midland, texas. he was back for that evening for it this event with dick cheney and glen beck. a man who is a sensation on the

internet where he sells pants now. paul ryan has this week also been in georgia at two separate fundraisers in south carolina and today he was in huntsville, alabama. i think we have photos of him arriving in huntsville, alabama. tickets were up to $5,000 a pop. but that's in alabama. i mean, the election is a week from tuesday and you're in alabama? is alabama swinging this year? this is not swing state travel. it's not preaching to the choir. it's like preaching to the mirror at this point. on the democratic ticket, the vice president has a different role to play than the president does. it is underappreciated what joe biden is doing for the democratic ticket right now, but we have footage which may help to clear up confusion on this subject. that's our exclusive that we have for you tonight. and that's ahead.

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real snow we got all year. basically it sucked. this year we're anticipating another big weather event right before halloween and it's actually looking like it might be a big enough weather event it might mess with another big national thing a week after halloween and that's something you might have heard of called election day. halloween is wednesday and election day is the tuesday after that. forecasters at the national weather service have taken to calling what is upon us a frankenstorm. it's a come by niegs combination of a few things. it's a hurricane. but hurricane sandy combines with a winter storm coming out of the west and that combines further with a blast of arctic air. a storm or a storm system or combination of storm systems that's potentially this significant is always of national significance. but the frankenstorm could be of

flit call significance if the damage is long-lasting enough that it complicates not just early voting next week but potentially voting on election day itself on november 6th. there's no reason to be alarmed about this, but there's reason to pay attention to the storm. reason to pay attention to the storm no matter where you live. even if it's not going to direct you as weather, it might direct you as politics. in the swing state of virginia, governor bob mcdonnell has already declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the frankenstorm and mitt romney has cancelled a rally set for sunday in virginia beach buzz of the threat of the storm. so thanks to the weather, there's even more uncertainty about what the next ten days hold in this particular swing state of virginia. there's more uncertainty there. and that's remarkable to the point of irony. there was already so much uncertainty about virginia. when president obama won virginia in 2008, it was more

than just a political deal. it was historic. this was the first time a democrat had won virginia in a race for the presidency since 1964. virginia had been red for more than four decades. president obama's victory in virginia reflected just a historic change. virginia is a state that's influx. the political history does not tell you much about what's going to happen next in virginia because what just happened in virginia in the last election was totally unprecedented in modern history. virginia is in new territory. and then what happened after that, was still further new tertorian. still more change. it makes the change more unknowable right now. in 2009 the year after it went blue, the state decided to elect this guy, republican governor bob mcdonnell. a fairly radical conservative guy who went to pat robertson's

university saying that the government should use public policy to punish cohabitaters, homosexuals, and foreign cay tors, oh my. he pulled it into republican territory with him. early this year that republican legislature came up with a fertilized egg as person bill. a bill that would ban all abortion and hormonal contraception and invee tro fertilization. the day the bill was passed through a committee, this is what the lobby of the hearing room looked like. the area around was full of protesters. that was a standing-room only type of gig. there were protesters outside as well. they came out with the forced vaginal ultrasound bill, which governor mcdonnell threw his full support behind. hundreds of protesters turned up at the capital on the day the

house was supposed to vote to take part in a silent protest. protesters lined the sidewalks as they would have to see them as they walked to work. it was a very powerful, very large protest. they are making their case on two levels. first, there were a lot of people. lots of women, also some men too. and they were all willing to show up and stand there that they were against the bill. they were being seen and not heard on an issue where their complaint was that their voices were being ignored. choices were being taken away. governor mcdonnell called for an amended version of the forced ultrasound bill that did not require that the ultrasound be the vaginal probe kind. but he did sign the final forced ultrasound bill. he earned himself the national

nickname "he will never shed as long as i'm alive and that was "governor ultrasound." they aggressively engineered that board toward a decision that could have the effect of shutting down almost all the abortion clinics in virginia. virginia has been in a state of political unrest and upheaval since the 2008 elections. the political landscape is changing there. we talked about this kind of political phenomenon last night. the same is true of a number of swing states. it's an underappreciated the way they are being appreciated in the final days of the ras i. in some of the really important ones, in ohio, in wisconsin, in virginia, we have seen very, very, very potent partisan

political conflict in the last couple years leading up to this year's presidential race. presidential elections do not just happen in a presidential partisan vacuum. the way the parties comport themselves in each individual state has an effect on the way voters think about those parties even at the national level. if you are a national candidate, one sure fire way to tether yourself to a controversial state party is to make sure that you embody the positions from your party that caused all the controversy in your state in the first place. when you said you would have absolutely supported a personhood-style measure to ban all abortion, when you say that you're speaking to an electorate that's fired up about that issue. that has been fighting against that position in their state all year. and you know maybe you could still maybe get away with holding a mitt romney position against abortion and funding for planned parenthood and access to contraception. maybe you could hold that pitch yourself successfully to virginia voters if you carefully tack to the center in the general election if you picked a moderate running mate who is not going to reflect all the crazy roll backs to women's health being proposed in the state.

maybe you could get away with that. if on the other hand you picked a guy who sponsored a personhood bill for the nation, a guy whose abortion position is he would have them to have their rapist child against their will, to narrow the definition of rape for women seeking access to abortion, if you picked that guy on your ticket, and you announce him as your running mate in virginia, you are probably going to remind virginia voters of all of the stuff they have been taking from the republicans in their state lately that has made the whole state so mad. that's why virginia is a swing state this year. i mean nobody expected virginia to be contested race in this election. the democrats were hoping for it, but they are hoping for it and they were not expecting it. they assumed it would revert back to its 44-year legacy as a red state after this experience

in 2008. but right now, virginia is neck and neck. the last three polls in virginia show the race either tied or mitt romney up by just one or two points. and this is part of why. president obama is winning in virginia among women. winning in those polls between 5 and 16 points. the gender gap in the persistent problem that republicans have in appealing to women because of the way republicans have governed there is having a powerful effect on the presidential race this year. stay with us. as prilosec otc. now with a fancy coating that gives you a burst of wildberry flavor. now why make a flavored heartburn pill? because this is america. and we don't just make things you want, we make things you didn't even know you wanted. like a spoon fork. spray cheese. and jeans made out of sweatpants. so grab yourself some new prilosec otc wildberry. [ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn.

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i think we have seen again this week i don't think any male politician should be making health care decisions for women. >> president obama speaking in richmond, virginia, yesterday. joining us is melissa harris perry. she's a columnist for "the nation." thank you for being here. >> absolutely. >> is there a sealed bubble around presidential elections or does what happens in the swing states reflect not just the presidential election but what has happened politically in the states since '08? >> i think the story you told

about virginia going blue, and a story we didn't tell quite enough on election night in 2008. in part, because like ten minutes later we called the west coast and it was over. so no one really paused it to take note of it. but that transition is indicative of sort of how much virginia has changed as a place. there's always been a border state. it's different in northern virginia. but the fact is that the fights that we have seen there over the course of the past four years is a shifting back and forth of the republican control and then the republican control going too far, particularly on women's questions is a microcosm of what's happening in the broader country. it may come to ohio, but it may also come to virginia. >> does governor bob mcdonnell, before he became governor, he was talked about as vice presidential pick. but does his record in that state make it more or less likely that president obama will take the state? >> it's a little hard to tell.

we look at the gender gap and we start sort of taking all women and putting them in the same category and saying there's a uterus uprising here. there are different sorts of women who support president obama. so women of color are driving that gender gap. so yes, there's a gender gap, but a lot is driven by african-american women. southeast asian women who haven't forgotten george allen on the senate ticket, that suggests that the question of whether or not it's going to have an impact on the presidential race is whether or not those parts of the obama for america 2012 machine are prepared to turn out those communities and not just sort of thinking about women as an interest group relative to these reproductive rights policies. >> what do you know about how good they are? the logistics of running a get out the vote operation don't

work for all types of voters. >> the virginia campaign to get out women of color and get out voters in northern virginia is extremely good. and then there's a hurricane. and the question of whether or not those few days of the president showing up in virginia and having something to say and indicating how important that state is to him is kind of hard to tell from this distance. but they have been very good at exactly the communities where the women who are obama supporting women. the one place that's the challenge are college campuses. the other group of women are women who have never lived in a world with without access to abortion services, living on the campuses of the university of virginia and all of that and whether or not those women show up to vote depends a lot on whether or not the young vote feels enthusiastic rather than the women's vote. >> and whether campuses will be shut down because of the storm.

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>> thank you mr. president. >> brad i'm going to give you one more minute. >> earlier however on air force 1, right when our time was up, and the interview was supposed to end, the president asked to keep going. he ran through what's become his pitch. his list of principles in the current campaign ad that's airing. but then he also wanted to address how this all must look from the outside. >> it's funny. one of the things about being on the campaign trail, you're in air force one, you're in marine one, these big motorcades. michele jokes i've got everything but a caboose and a dog sled.

none of that is the presidency. the presidency is all about whose going to fight for the american people every single day, even when you've got to make tough decisions that are unpopular because you have some compass about what this country can be. and -- and, you know, during the course of these four years, there are all kinds of mistakes that i've made every single day. but my compass has been true. and i've focused on what's going to be best for the american people. >> that was how brian williams's "rock center" interview with president obama yesterday. after spending two days with brian williams the president asked for one more minute. it was that compass idea. this compass idea that president obama went out of his way to make sure he said there. the idea of the president having a compass that is true. that is basically the idea of

character, of integrity. it's the idea of personal authenticity to an extent. that you know what a person stands for. that you know that person will stand for those things even when it's hard. because it is who they truly are. this is more than just being likable. this is the idea of personal substance that you can be counted on to do the right thing because you are who you say you are. you are not acting. this is a sort of intangible currency that campaigns are always competing for at every level. but it's particularly so at the end of big races where the people who haven't been persuaded by the more overt arguments and policy differences are the ones who are going to make the final decision. at the end of the day people who have no reason to vote one way or the other will vote for who they believe in. that's what the birtherism is on the right. they keep with that thing because the president secretly is not what he seems. the trust issue is also what the president is pressing about mitt romney.

not in some creepy way, but more directly asking people to question whether you believe this guy believes he stands for anything. whether you really trust that he believes what he says. they don't get much credit for it, but the obama biden ticket's secret weapon on the issue of authenticity, and i am impeachbly being who you purport to be, their secret weapon has always been vice president joe biden. the right has tried to make him into a caricature and a joke but it's instructive that he was able to defuse that totally at the vice presidential debate where he said yeah, sure, make fun of me all you want, which i always say what i mean. joe biden always does say what he means. and when he really says what he means, when he really let's loose, it can be a powerful thing. watch. >> people say to me now, and i wonder now, whatever gave you

the courage as a 29-year-old kid to announce to the united states senate against a man who had an 82% favorable rating, in a year when we knew it was going to be tough. what gave you the courage to run? or some thought, what made you some fool hardy. the answer, you girls should know this, was your father. your father. i didn't know him when i announced through the senate. but i honest to god believed that i could maybe go help him end this war. i honest to god believed that. what people don't realize, had your father not been there, had your father never been in the senate, so much more blood, so much more treasure would have been wasted.

the war would have never ended when it did. it would have never ended how it did. your father gave courage to people who didn't have the courage to speak up, to finally stand up. your father stood there and took all of that beating. your father, who was characterized by these right-wing guys as a coward and unwilling to fight, your father was a genuine hero. the irony used to make me so angry, so angry, that your father would never speak up and talk about. his heroism. your father had more physical courage in his little finger than 95% of those guys who continued to fight, to fight a war we shouldn't have fought in the first place. but because he took such a

miserable beating, he actually, even though he didn't win that election, he won the end of the war. it would have never happened. >> that was vice president joe biden offering the eulogy last night for senator george mcgovern who was a war hero and who was the democratic parties presidential nominee in 1972. he died this weekend by the age of 90. vice president biden showing what has been central to his political career. which is being able to tell powerful and accessible stories that connect human beings to values and political ideas. that is what joe biden has always done as a politician and it is what he does now on this campaign, as this campaign becomes more and more every day about that challenge, that compass, that issue of authenticity and values.